No, an "idea" is not covered by copyright =or= patent law.  Ideas are abstract -- that's what they are legally.  They become subject to intellectual property protection when they are reduced from an "idea" to a specific "work" or "process" or "method".

An idea is "my girlfriend dumped me and my dog has fleas".  That would be an "idea".  Reducing that to a specific set of lyrics and melody would become a typical country and western song.  You are perfectly free to write your own song based on that =idea=.  You could make it a country and western song, or you could make it "my bitch dumped my sorry ass and my dog ate my homework" and set it to any melody or style you wanted -- I'd suggest hip-hop or rap for any song involving the word "bitch".

For patents, the "idea" might be something like "open a can" and the "method" or "process" would involve some apparatus, such as an argon laser contained within an enclosure with a rotating base or carriage mechanism that either moved the laser or rotated the can.  If you patented that, I'd be free to come up with my own can opening mechanism involving a chainsaw.  As for "forever", no, they aren't "forever".  One of my oldest patents is about to expire, and I've not been alive forever.  Thankfully.

Software patents are just like "physical stuff" patents -- if I come up with a way to speed up a function, you're free to find some other way to speed up that same function, or completely eliminate the function, and after some length of time, my patent expires and you and anyone else can use it for free.  My first patent was, in fact, a software patent (my second is a hardware patent, the rest of my patents are a mix of hardware and software and I think I have a business method patent or two waiting approval, but with so damned many of them, I lose track ...)

Intellectual property law isn't nearly as nasty as many lay people think it is.  The real objective of IP law is encouraging people to make new stuff, which is why it discourages people from using old stuff without paying for it.  Imaging if we were all still using Visicalc and Microsoft Notepad.  What you see as a problem -- not being able to use old stuff for free -- is a feature because it forces people to come up with new stuff, which is supposed to be "better" because people won't pay for "worse".

I'm sorry, but the legal definitions for Intellectual Property aren't open to someones opinion.

Copyrights protect "expressions" and "works".  Patents protect a specific embodiment of a method, process or apparatus.  Feel free to contact an Intellectual Property attorney.  I spent 20 years working with them to develop and protect Intellectual Property.  I don't know any in Canada, but I know a dozen or more here in the States.

There are other reasons to produce new stuff, including to create competition in the market.  So, if there is something that's "good enough" and you want to make money, come up with something else that's "good enough" and sell it.

These sorts of attitudes are why I have mixed feelings about SOPA and PIPA.

Based on that, and the fact that no one else seems to be disagreeing with you, I think I have no choice but to support both SOPA and PIPA.

The notion that Intellectual Property is just 1's and 0's, or "ideas" that shouldn't be owned by anyone, is why we're in the present situation.  If the people who are opposed to SOPA and PIPA don't understand why Intellectual Property is just as "real" as physical property, perhaps it's time that governments began enforcing property rights.

The most fundamental of all rights is the right of property ownership, whether it is the right to control your body, the right to control land you lawfully own (meaning, you don't have the right to control someone elses land ...), the right to control the fruits of your labor -- whatever it is, property ownership is the absolute bedrock right.

What people who are opposed to Intellectual Property ownership are saying is that some fruits of some labor is NOT the property of the person who expends the labor, but the collective property of society as a whole.  It's akin to saying that butchers, bakers and candlestick makers all get to own their labor, but tailors and blacksmiths have to give their labor away at no charge.

To give you some background, I've received more than a dozen US Patents, filed about 50 applications, worked on the development of over 100, and personally reviewed something between 300 and 500.  The amount of effort it takes to produce that much intellectual property is massively huge, representing from hundreds of millions of dollars to =billions= of dollars of technical labor as well as legal professionals, administrative professionals, technical writers, draftsmen, and so on down the line.  In my last year of regular employment, the cost of developing the Intellectual Property I produced -- just me, just one year -- was 3 times my salary and compensation.

What if my former employer wasn't able to make money from licensing the corporate patent portfolio?

Many of those innovations WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.  Computer hardware patents I wrote that =will= increase the performance of computers would likely never have been made.  Energy management patents that have the potential to conserve energy, or make electrical grids work better -- never invented.  Patents in the area of data privacy that allow information to be more tightly controlled, and protect the privacy of consumers -- non-existent.

These are real benefits to Mankind, and without the profit motive that is provided by limited patent protection -- 20 year patent lifetimes in WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) states -- many of these innovations wouldn't be out there.

This isn't just my "opinion".  This is what I used to do, and when I started my company, making sure I protected my Intellectual Property, so I'd be able to protect my means of earning a living, was high on the list.

I think you're gross ignorance about Intellectual Property speaks volumes.

First, you cannot patent a natural process.  A blacksmith cannot patent "rust" then sue anyone who makes horseshoes that =do= rust on their own.

Second, you cannot patent something that is "obvious to one skilled in the art".  A blacksmith cannot patent heating up iron in a fire to make it hot, because that's what fire does -- it makes something hot.  Anyone who uses fire, especially anyone who uses fire around metal, or vice versa, knows this.  It is "obvious to one skilled in the art."

Third, you cannot patent something that other people already know about or already do.  A blacksmith cannot patent punching holes in pieces of metal for the nails to go through, because people already punch holes in things.

Now, let's say a blacksmith comes up with a way to make horseshoes from Gummy Bears.  Assuming one could figure out how to do such a thing, the blacksmith could do that.  In exchange for the exclusive right to do such a thing, the blacksmith =must= describe, in full and complete detail, how to do that.  The blacksmith cannot simply say "I patent Gummy Bear horseshoes!" and not tell anyone how they did that.  You could then read this information, which you would not have if the patent system didn't exist, and learn how to make door hinges from potato chips.

This is an example of what happens, and it was a hotly contested patent at the time.  It is ... the dreaded "Blinking Cursor Patent".

http://www.google.com/patents/US3531796

That patent is referenced by 5 additional patents which were issued from 1974 through 1978.  Without the requirement that patents be published, those 5 additional patents likely wouldn't have been issued.  What actually happened with the "Blinking Cursor Patent" is exactly what happens with patents -- someone comes up with something better and before you know it, no one =cares= about cursors that blink, they want cursors that change shape.  What happens next is something like this patent --

http://www.google.com/patents/US4197590

What you want to pay careful attention to is the "Referenced By" section.  That is all of the new patents which were "taught" something (in patent lingo we say "The present invention teaches a method and process by which gummy bear candy, or other candies formed from gummy material, regardless of the animal, vegetable or mineral shape into which said gummy candy is formed, may be converted into a horse shoe, or shoe for other such animals as may be used to perform labor of various forms, blah, blah, blah.&quot by US Patent 4,197,590.

One of my earliest patents referenced more than 15 other patents, and was referenced by several SCREENFULS of other patents.

Again, because there is a legal =requirement= that the patent be fully disclosed, all of those several SCREENFULS of new patents were made easier to create.  That patent is going to expire soon, but it is still being used to "teach" new methods for doing what it does.

You can do this with patents all day long -- find something in a product you use, look up the patents, and see all of the innovations that came from that one patent.  If it's a good patent, like the one I wrote that has SCREENFULS of references, it can change entire industries.  If it's a bad patent (and I have a few of those), it mostly gets ignored.  But the key is that the requirement that inventors publish the instructions for making the "thing" provides Society with a HUGE amount of technical information it wouldn't otherwise have.

If you'd like a counter-example, I give you WD-40.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40

No one knows how to make WD-40, other than the company that makes it.  The uses of WD-40 are entirely too numerous to mention, and the company that makes it isn't telling anyone how to do that.  We don't know what sorts of improvements could even be made to WD-40 because we can't read the "recipe" and try to improve on it.  WD-40 is an intellectual dead end.  It is the same product it was in 1953, back when computers filled entire rooms and there was no such thing as a PS/3.

What you want is WD-40.  What I want is blinking cursors, cursors that change shape, cursors that can aid in navigating 3D objects, and so on.  You want stagnation, I want innovation.

I was a design engineer in new product design in several companies. I have my name on about 10 patents, assigned to the companies where I worked.

The whole point is to limit competition for the company that innovates. It is their reward for expending the R & D capital to develop the idea.

I also have copyrights on several books. I spent the time and effort to write them and as such should get paid for what I created.

I also have intellectual property for an idea that I developed into a product that can be made using certain methods and techiques. This is currently in litigation with a company that stole it outright.

I expended effort, time, money and created a method and technique and should have the right to reap the rewards.

If not for such protections, no one would want to expend money as someone else would  just take your work and put their name on it. In whivh case, why bother.

Your work is nothing other than a natural process of your muscles moving in a certain order. I can't believe anyone pays you for something that is just a natural process. And you think that natural process should result in you getting money, wow, you are almost a capitalist swine thinking you should get money for a purely natural process. 

I think if that were true the publication requirement for patents wouldn't exist.  The legal requirements for publication are extremely strict -- if you file a patent and you miss a single step, the patent is invalid.  Yes, you get the monopoly, but that could be granted without the strict publication requirements.

For example, let's say I patent "Gummy Bear Horse Shoes" and the method involves heating the gummy material until it forms some kind of cross-linked polymer material.  But in order to cause that cross-linkage I have to add a Snicker's bar because the peanut oil is converted into some super-strong tar-like substance.  I can't leave out the Snicker's bar.  I =must= disclose that not only is a Snicker's bar required to make the horse shoes, but the temperature that this happens at must be disclosed.  If I don't do that, I lose the patent.

A while back I was in a situation where I needed to "embody" a patent that was owned by my employer.  The inventor sat 4 floors up, so I went to his office and told him the problems I was having making his patent work.  Mind you -- very serious business because if I can't "embody" the patent, it could be invalid if someone else figures out that the patent is missing something.  It turned out that the missing ingredient was defective hardware, not a defective patent, so the patent was safe.  Once I determined how the hardware was broken, I was able to work around that problem and embody his invention.

Most patents have a "shelf life" that is measured in far fewer years than the patent monopoly, but the "claims" can serve to educate people for far longer -- the last patent that referenced the patent I received long enough ago that it's going to expire soon was issued last month.  The techniques in that patent of mine have been obsolete for just about as long as the patent's been out there.  The "troublesome" patent I mentioned above was a very important tool, but it lasted all of about 7 or 8 years before it stopped being as interesting as it once was.  My understanding is that 3 to 5 years is about all you get, before someone invents a better mousetrap.

If my track record with patents is any indication, there are people out there right now scratching their heads and going "Hmmm.  There might just be something to this patent process."

Patents drive so much innovation it really isn't funny, and the lack of improvement on WD-40 is the classic example.  Not knocking how great WD-40 is, but we also have no clue how much it could have been improved on over the last 48 years.

No, you're just ignorant capitalists who have no idea how to reward people without being totalitarian facists promoting monopolies.

You don't own a den or lawn. You temporarily inhabit them. Do it yourself.

That's true, money =is= an incentive.  But I'd like to discuss the difference between something that has patent protection (Post-It Notes) and something that doesn't (WD-40).  You can buy all manner of Post-It Note like products, with all sorts of uses.  That patent ran out =years= ago.  But you can only buy one kind of WD-40 and it has been the same, more or less, since 1953.

Who really has the monopoly?  3M or WD-40?  3M lost the monopoly on Post-It Notes =years= ago.  The WD-40 people still have the monopoly on WD-40, and they'll keep having it so long as they keep their secrets.

This is the exact opposite of what Vastet claims is happening.

I don't have much knowledge to contribute on the patenting subject, this statement I strongly disagree with.

To touch on this profit incentive thing again, I'd like to point out some irony I see in that statement (no profit incentive=no innovation/motivation) being made by the average athiest.  I see a shadow of similarity between that statement and a thiest saying "why would anyone be good without ultimate judgement."   We athiest like to jump on those statements and say things like    "How about being good for the hell of being good," or  "an athiest who does the right thing because it is the right thing to do is more honorable than a thiest who does the right thing because he believes he will be rewarded" or  "how about the fact it is proven people act just fine without religion, if not better."    Most athiest like to believe people in general can be good without an ultimate judge, and that that is a better, truer form of good we should endeavor for.  Why not apply the same optimism to our advancing civlization, and the monetary system.  The dollar is not almighty, only our minds and our reasources are important, not profit.   Money is not our ultimate ruler, we can break free from its shackles with time, in the same way we so many here are working hard to help our world break free from the shackles of organizerd religion.     And I am optimistic that we can, as I am optimistic that people are in general decent not because they want to be rewarded or are scared of being punished by some ultimate ruler, but because in general the average person wants to do the right thing.  I don't know which has caused our species more harm, the idea of an all powerful ultimate dictator, or the concept of money, but I believe that with enough time if we survive,  they are both going to fade out eventually. 

I'm THIS close to busting out my Zeitgeist stuff and explaining to you and Beyond how ridiculous your notions are.  Intellectual property control isn't truly rewarded because when you introduce incentive into the equation, it keeps them motivate in the WRONG ways.  It creates a profiteering machine that is based on the idea of small changes over time, sometimes no changes at all, on an idea that can be great, but instead, a form of obsolescence is integrated making it something that requires being constantly updated for a fee or purchasing something new altogether rather than keeping what you have that should last years and years without having to worry about becoming potentially useless.  However, the way our minds have been conditioned is through gain and possession; very few of us live with the notion of doing things just to do them and even before having that mindset, they were living with a "GIMME THAT IT'S MINE!" or "whoever winds up with the most wins" mentality at one point or another.  It's why we have greed and corruption.  When we start realizing that monetary compensation isn't even remotely the best motivating factor for ideas that benefit everyone, then we can finally get our shit together and get up to today's standards which very few of us are living up to today, technologically speaking.  

By the way, there are people that survive just fine without money... http://www.odditycentral.com/news/woman-hasnt-used-money-in-15-years.html

That's a laugh.  Even if you tried to teach me anything, which would be pretty feeble at best, your views on the system would make me disregard just about everything just as my views on how society and the way things should exist would be, in turn, denounced based on your indoctrination to the whole broken mechanism.  I bet you didn't even read that link I posted.  Save what intellect you don't have on the issue and keep it bottled up for someone who is ten million times more impressionable; like a toddler.

Gee, didn't see that coming...

But they don't.  Keep things the way they are much longer, however, and we'll see nonsense like that emerge, though.

I can do that now without any trouble whatsoever.  Your example is so invalid that it borders on insanity.  In a society that demands monetary compensation for just about anything, I have to purchase those CDs in order to legally own them.  Technically speaking, Microsoft owns the rights to the INFORMATION on those CDs.  We're not under guard here; I can do what I please with those CDs as long as I don't re-sell or pirate to anyone because, as iron fisted as it is, it's still not REALLY my information to legally distribute and even if it were legal for me to make a buck off of, I wouldn't because it's just INFORMATION.  The way you think, however, is that if they aren't getting money from it, it makes it wrong to own never taking into consideration that there are other ways to say thanks and reward.  Easier to just throw an illusory at them, right?  Don't worry; you can take solace in the fact that you're not even remotely alone on this type of thought process.  I'm just going to reiterate this once more for the mentally impaired: THE CDs ARE MINE; THE INFORMATION IS NOT.  THEREFORE, I CANNOT SEEK MONETARY GAIN OR DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT CONSENT.  I can, however, set a nice oil drum fire and toss in any CD I dislike including Vista and Windows ME.        

I'm an atheist; I don't have your naive luxury of believing in things that people have no clue about.

*My* understanding of copyrights (...for what precious little that's worth...) is that they are a temporary monopoly to reward the author of a concept.  (The word "author" here is to be understood broadly, to include, say, composers of musical works, creators of computer graphics, etc.)  This temporary monopoly has a purpose: to reward a person with the fruits of their labor by temporarily allowing that author to be the only person legally able to make a profit off of the work in question.  When the temporary period ends, the work is to become a part of the public domain, so that it can inspire/influence authors (still understood in that broad sense) to come in the future, and contribute to the national culture. 

On this understanding, the problem with copyright laws is not that they exist (they *should* exist,) but rather that they last "forever, on the installment plan."  (Sorry, but I don't remember who it was that I got that idea from--I just found it on the web somewhere.  I acknowledge that it is *not* my own phrase.)

Conor

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"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII

"But it should!"--Me

One can give monetary incentive without locking ideas up for so many decades that by the time it becomes fair use it's become completely useless and/or uninteresting.

And most of the time it's corporations who hold the patents/copyrights, so the inventors or artists don't see the real fruits of their labours anyway. As an author, I know full well how little I'll get for publishing a story. And it has a lot more to do with publishers than pirates. Same goes for music and movies. Yet artists stupidly listen to their slave drivers over common sense and basic logic.

Anyone can ironically suggest I'm the ignorant one all they like, but they're just making total fools of themselves. There's nothing to argue.

Par for the course.

Anyway, Furry, you wrote: "What's copyrighted is a specific "work", not the "concept" or "idea" or "genre" or whatever."

I didn't quote the rest of that part because I don't really have an issue with it.  What I tried (...apparently badly...) to communicate was that my usage of the term "author" was not meant to be understood restrictively (as in "only a person who writes a book,&quot but should be understood fairly broadly (i.e., as including composers of music, creators of computer programs, etc.)  What I did *not* mean to do is refer to ideas that have not been put to paper, or discussions about creative works as distinguished from actual creative works (actual pieces of music, actual poems, etc.)

As for your point about the length of copyright existence...hmmm...I'll have to chew on it for a while.  But for now, I can mention that it is my understanding that there are some very old films which are in danger of being lost forever, simply because copyright law as it exists doesn't allow anyone but the owner--who cannot be located, and may be unknown--to authorize the copying/reproduction of said film specifically for the purpose of preserving it for future generations.  One problem that I *do* have with copyright law as-is, is the fact that, when I take music CDs that I purchased fair-and-square in the store, and take them home, I am not allowed to use my computer to select songs off of different CDs and burn them onto a blank so as to have a CD of *my* choice of music.  It seems halfway outrageous to me that legally, *I* *can't* *do* *as* *I* *see* *fit* *with* *my* *own* *property!*  (And I stress: this chain of events starts with me walking into a music store to purchase CDs that, to the best of my knowledge, are *not* bootlegged copies!  In other words, I'm giving the musicians/producers/companies, etc., the money they seek.) 

Conor

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"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII

"But it should!"--Me

Copyright law protects "works" because until something is reduced to a "work", it's just an "idea" and "ideas" cannot be owned.  Not sure where that fits into what you were saying, because there's not enough context.

First, I love your signature.  I often had a hard time getting my clergy peeps to understand that my =faith= was rock-solid and I didn't need to be protected from Science.  I just wish more clergy peeps were understanding.

Your understanding of copyright law is actually incorrect -- the Home Audio Recording Act made it legal for you to create all the mix-tapes you want.  Media companies wanted to outlaw home-made mix-tapes, but they lost that battle.

Also, my understanding of why films aren't being preserved isn't because the work can't be STARTED under the existing copyright laws, but because there is no financial incentive to do the work.  In other words, to the best of my knowledge, someone could purchase a print, restore it, hold onto that restored work, THEN sell it when the work falls into the public domain.  You have the right to modify any work you purchase, provided you don't then distribute that work.  You might be prevented by a license for that work, but copyright law doesn't keep you from doing all sorts of things to whatever you lawfully purchase.  The risk here is that more than one person will perform the restoration and glut the market.  I might be wrong, but see the next paragraph, because I'm not completely wrong

There is additional public law which provides for what you mention.  See http://www.loc.gov/film/filmabou.html .  If there are works in need of protection, one would hope the Library of Congress would recognize them.

Thanks for posting that video!  It's basically what I was trying to convey (albeit badly.)

Conor

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"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII

"But it should!"

The path I wound up taking took me (duh) to a different conclusion.  Some of it was realizing that Christianity was just plain made up.  I mean, it's about as fake as it gets because it is simply impossible to go from Judaism to Christianity.  But there rest of it was looking at what Judaism is trying to accomplish, comparing the world as we know, with 100% certainty it existed 3,500 years ago, and seeing how how things have worked out.  To me, the proof is in the pudding.  Half the planet or so believes in the same G-d I believe in (more or less), and contrary to what you might think, that percentage isn't going down.

I see that video and what I get from it is "We want to be lazy.  Please let us be lazy."

There is nothing keeping someone from making up their own talking rodents and creating "works" which involve them.  "Charlotte's Web" by E. B. White has an entire barnyard of talking animals -- they weren't sued by Disney or any of the other "talking barnyard animal" companies.  What is it about a talking mouse that people can't seem to create some new "talking mouse" character?  "Pinky and The Brain" were two talking mice -- they weren't stopped by Disney.  "Stuart Little", also by E. B. White, is about a talking mouse -- not stopped by Disney.

I'm sure I could dig up more talking mice or lists of fictional rats and mice, but I hope I've made the point -- there is nothing stopping anyone from having a story about a mouse that talks and does various things.  GO DO THEM.

I seem to recall a presentation with a dry erase board called RSA Animate on Youtube mentioning a company in Australia that gives it's employees one day out of the week to work on whatever they wanted which I thought was cool as hell.

It's kind of a series that revolves around capitalism and a new type of social order.  You mentioned that you aren't a fan of The Zeitgeist Movement, but maybe you might find these videos interesting.  www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg 

The accusations in all directions of copying code and interface ideas has been rife as long as the software industry has been around, and programmers move around, so there are almost certainly bits of code 'shared' across more than one commercial application or OS.

I did not say that paid-for software is all crap. Both commercial and Open Source can produce good and bad software.

Windows has a lot of really bad design in it - I have wrestled with its crap from 3.1 on. I have been face-palming at appalling design decisions from that company ever since I first encountered it, many of which were certainly from the era when that strange person Bill Gates had a direct hand in the design of the code. Windows 7 still has a lot of legacy stupidity in it.

There would have been plenty of incentive to produce a new OS from scratch even if Windows code had been freely available, simply because of the continuing need/desire for something better. It's a pity Microsoft themselves didn't redo their OS from scratch, because one of he biggest problems with Windows has always been its burden of legacy code, and a deep reluctance to start over.

But of course there are also many excellent examples of commercial programs. People with real skill and insight into programming are employed by companies run by people with a genuine understanding of what they are about, and what is required to encourage people to produce their best. And it ain't necessarily just showering them with monetary incentives.

Quoting any number of less-than-well designed Open Source programs does nothing to discredit the successes, such as Apache, any more than my experience with Windoze proves commercial software is all crap.

I am just trying to point out that good design is not dependent on monetary incentive. For some people it can work more than for others.

Copyright and patent protection does serve a purpose, but it can also be abused, and become a block to progress and freedom.

Balance, please.

I think that what we see in copyright laws and treaties is abusive because of a shift away from the idea that these laws exist to protect the user and future creator as well as current creators and the importance of having published material enter the public domain to be available for creative reuse, educational and research purposes.  People can't create online public archives about the history of film and literature in the 20th century even though the source material and technology exist and these resources would be hugely beneficial to society. A research library called HathiTrust attempted to create a digital library of only orphaned works for a limited community of students. They were sued and copyright law is strict liability.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-jenkins/til-the-end-of-eternity_b_1194399.html

One area of creative reuse which is not even imitation that is severely hindered is documentary film making. When people create documentary films they invariably end up recording things in their surroundings that are copyright protected which can make the costs prohibitively high. The PBS documentary  "Eyes on the Prize" about the US civil rights movement for example could not be re-aired or released on DVD for years because they couldn't afford to license the music in the film. Overprotection may be as bad as no protection. It takes the benefit of copyright law away from users and future creators in order to give more to current creators but the promise of copyright protection is to everyone and if lawmakers break that promise to the user then users like the OP won't respect it anymore. It's hard to think of a reason why he should.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_on_the_Prize

Bob,

I won't deny that Microsoft behaves in strange and mysterious ways.  However, after about 30 years of using their operating systems, I'll say this -- I don't worry that software I've had to a decade or more won't run on their systems.  I've been using Linux since it was installed from floppy disks, and a number of other UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems since the early '80s and Windows has them all beat for "backwards compatibility".  Is Windows still crap?  Yup.  A giant steaming turd pile of crap.

Copyright isn't about making it so 12 people can make 12 minor modifications to the Excel interface.  Or replacing some virtual machine / pseudo-code layer so the application runs faster / better / different.

Here's the language from the Constitution, just for reference:

There are some interesting things about the Copyright Clause.  It's objective is to =promote= innovation, it's not to make it so you get to use whatever you want.  It's to encourage Artisans to make new stuff.  The assumption, by folks who are Free Market Capitalists, is that with more new stuff, there will be competition in the market.  And I'd argue, there is.

If there is competition in the market, why does Microsoft still have a monopoly?  My guess is that in large part that is because Apple prices their products so horribly high that buying from Microsoft is an easier decision.  I bought a Mac Mini for my business and it cost more than any Windows PC I'd purchased in =years=, and it cost more than any Linux server I'd built in years as well.  Oh, and the Mac Mini is much harder to find software I want.  No one can force Apple to actually compete effectively if they don't want to.  Because there is no real profit motive to Linux, it's been hard to get a Linux distribution which works as "easily" as Windows, though I think Ubuntu has done a good job in getting to that point.  I had seen a shrink-wrapped distribution at my local electronics store, but it made such a poor impression I can't remember which distribution it was.  A number of PC vendors have offered to pre-load Linux, but that hasn't been all that popular either.  A monopoly is only a monopoly when people don't have viable choices, and that's not at all the case with PC operating systems anymore.

So, "innovation" is happening, and where the innovations are well presented, they seem to be taking hold.  Android now rules the mobile space, Windows the "personal computer" space and Linux the server and super computer spaces.  That innovation is happening in an environment with copyright laws.

On to patents.

Patent law has the same set of objectives -- fostering innovation.  You claim that the "One Click Purchasing" patent is somehow trivial, but as we like to say, a patent is only obvious after you tell someone about it.  Of the 50 or so patent applications I've filed, maybe 3 or 4 weren't "obvious" after I explained them to someone, and the ones that weren't "obvious" were often considered to be "impossible".  But once I explained them, suddenly they were just as obvious as the others.  The key to invention is getting rid of pre-conceived notions.  Who'd ever put a weak adhesive on a piece of paper?  What a silly idea!  Except that Post-It Notes were a success =because= they used a weak adhesive.

We could have a patent system that doesn't provide a financial reward, in which case the company doing the research is at a disadvantage -- it costs money to develop "stuff", and their competitors wouldn't have that cost.  Or we could have a patent system that didn't require disclosure, but does private the financial reward, in which case they retain a monopoly for however long it takes people to figure out the "secrets" -- we already have that system, which is just the Trade Secret process.

So there are a number of possibilities for Intellectual Property --

1). The existing patent system.  You get a monopoly, but you have to disclose.

2). The existing trade secret system.   You get a monopoly, but only for as long as it takes someone to figure out your secrets.

3). Placing works in the public domain.  You don't get a monopoly, and you've obviously disclosed.  This happens surprisingly often and the website "ip.com" exists to do this.

The only combination of "money" (the monopoly) and "disclosure" is not getting any money and not telling anyone what you're doing, but that seems silly.

There is NO REQUIREMENT that you pick one of those three (or four).  You get to choose.